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Freakin’ Fantastic Fruits

Location: Roseau, Dominica

Today was an awesome day. We woke up to the best biscuits and gravy I’ve ever had, cooked by Hannah, Tor and Nick. Everyone was excited because today we were going on a fruit tour of Dominica. We were on shore at 8am to meet our taxi drivers, Gordon and Sea Cat. Sea Cat is a longtime friend of Sea|mester and he knew all the best places to take us. I wasn’t quite sure what a ‘fruit tour’ was, but I soon found out it’s where they take us around the island to try all kinds local fruit grown in the wild. We spent all day driving around Dominica picking oranges, grapefruit, passion fruit, star fruit, bananas, breadfruit, sour sop and more. I was blown away at how delicious all this wild fruit was. Each stop was just a few trees on the side of the road, then they would start chopping down fruit and throwing it to us, and it was the best fruit I’ve ever tasted. At one stop, they took us to these people’s home and they cooked us breadfruit, jerk chicken and fresh avocado all served on a leaf plate. At another stop, we went to a local cassava bread baker and we all got fresh cassava bread which was also fantastic. Basically, today was just a day of eating and then driving and then eating some more, so I loved it. After we completed the fruit tour, Gordon and Sea Cat took us over to a couple of waterfalls. We spent the afternoon stuffed with fruit, climbing all over rocks and swimming under the waterfalls. Dominica had been hit by a major hurricane in August of this year, so there is a lot of debris all over the island. There are massive tree trunks spread all throughout their rivers and some places were just completely destroyed. There was supposed to be a hot spring at these waterfalls, but the hurricane removed the rocks keeping it in place, so now there’s a hot waterfall, which honestly might be even cooler. After the waterfalls, we headed back to Ocean Star for another delicious meal cooked by our chefs today: bratwurst, mashed potatoes and cornbread. For the squeeze tonight, I asked everyone what traditions they had that they were proud of. I said that my family, no matter where we are in the world, calls each other on their birthdays and sing the birthday song. It was really cool to hear everyone’s answers and how different they all were. Now we’re about to have a student leadership development class. Skipper Cole Lewis out.